Shannon Mercado is a Senior Program Manager for the Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimer's Center working with the Computational Neurogenomics Team focusing on project management, proposal development, and implementation of large-scale collaborative projects. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism: Public Relations with a minor in Public Policy, Planning and Management. She joins the VMAC team with several years' experience coordinating RFP responses for federal grants and coordinating logistics for growing nonprofit organizations.

Jackie is completing her Ph.D. degree in Human Genetics under the mentorship of Dr. Timothy Hohman at the Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimer’s Center's Computational Neurogenomics Team. She received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies from Vanderbilt University. The focus of Jackie’s research is elucidating sex differences in the genetic architecture underlying resilience to Alzheimer’s disease. She will leverage multi-modal data from numerous studies of cognitive aging and implement novel sex-specific models to identify genes that protect the brain from the downstream consequences of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology.

Dr. Corey Bolton is a clinical neuropsychologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Bolton’s research focuses on the use of novel methods for early identification of Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular focus on blood-based biomarkers. He currently receives funding from the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association to better understand the ability of blood-based biomarkers to predict meaningful clinical changes in older adults, and to understand clinical, ethical, and social aspects of disclosing Alzheimer’s disease biomarker results to patients and their loved ones. He is also a collaborator with the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project and an investigator in the Vanderbilt Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. 

Dr. Bolton earned a doctorate in clinical psychology with a concentration in neuropsychology from Wheaton College in suburban Chicago. Prior to joining VMAC, he completed a doctoral internship in clinical neuropsychology at Rush University Medical Center and a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2022.